insufficient churchy-ness - 12.08.88

A lot is happening right now, inside me anyway. Let me try to stop being a boy crazy airhead and write something that really matters to me.

I've made a few decisions. And right or wrong, that's what they are. If I'm accepted, I'm going to THS 2nd semester this year.

I need a change of pace, if only to sort things out in my head. My life seems turned upside down and I don't really know how to change it.

I've been exercising a little and making a small effort to eat less.

My room is a haven for me at this time. I redecorated it, ripped up the carpet, painted the pink walls white and the trim black, cleared out all the kid stuff. It's just my books, pictures, and music. Most of my time is spent here.

School is all of a sudden going fantastic socially. Grades? I think I'll receive my first B's ever this semester. Yikes! Mom and Dad really get on my nerves, so family life isn't going too swift. But Ben? He said he cannot understand anyone who doesn't like their parents.

It occurs to me that there is a hierarchy at church, where we are all supposed to be brothers and sisters and one big family under God. Love thy neighbor, blah blah blah. Sure we do, as long as our neighbor is righteous and churchy and has family home evening every week.

My dad says there is a pecking order (like chickens who peck at each other) in high school. Usually the prettiest or the most athletic people whose parents have the most money are at the top. Don't tell me church isn't the same way. Only, it is about who has the best family, the best behaved kids, the super churchy callings, who is Mia Maid president, blah blah blah. Then, add to that all the looks and money stupidness.

Sometimes I feel so alone there because my family is small and not close and we don't take up an entire pew and my parents never fight but they definitely don't enjoy each other's company, either.

Whatever I felt for Ben, it never was. We're from different classes, you know. Like, my family is not the happy, celestial type and his is very close. Who cares that we live a block apart? They all love each other and laugh together over dinner and my house is silent and we're "strangers to one another." (My grandma said that when she visited us for my baptism).

One-sided relationships are quite poopy. All feelings for Ben are respectfully dead, buried, gone. I'm glad. That experience was exhausting. And, I'm going to be exhausted if I don't go to bed now.